Optimizing software quality to help your agency achieve its environmental sustainability goals

Municipal and local governments are increasingly interested in making their operations more environmentally sustainable, and for good reasons. Sustainability initiatives present opportunities to reduce energy, water, and materials use, and along with them the associated costs. They also reflect growing expectations from residents.

For instance, two-thirds of Americans support prioritizing the development of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar, according to Pew Research. Three U.S. states have established constitutional rights for a healthy environment, with at least nine more considering bills.

A specific area of focus is IT operations, as agencies invest in the digitization of internal operations and the services they deliver to residents. After all, IT is energy-intensive, with datacenters consuming up to 50 times the energy of a typical office building and accounting for 2% of total U.S. electricity use, according to the federal government. To address these concerns, 75% of organizations across industries will implement datacenter sustainability programs by 2027, Gartner predicts.

But one sustainability lever agencies might have overlooked is software quality assurance (QA). Inefficient software has an environmental cost. Take this example: If a computer program uses 5 kWh (kilowatt-hours) to complete a task while it could perform the same tasks at 3 kWh hours, it is wasting 2 kWh.

There are sustainable IT principles that agencies can institute, like automated software testing, that can help agencies identify and correct inefficiencies in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and custom-developed applications. In this way, agencies can decrease the environmental impact of their software, while at the same time, deliver a better resident experience.

Let’s take a look:

The link between software testing and sustainability
Software testing verifies that applications behave as expected and meet their specified requirements. It roots out defects and errors to make sure software operates with high performance and reliability—all of which directly impact your agency’s energy consumption and resource optimization.

For example, performance testing—like load and stress testing—can serve as a valuable tool for reducing energy consumption. These tests simulate real-world, heavy-load scenarios to confirm that applications will continue to perform efficiently. Through these tests, developers can identify any inefficiencies the application displays during high-stress periods that could drive up energy usage. Performing testing allows IT teams to proactively identify those inefficiencies before applications are put into production and potentially cause sustainability issues.

Functional testing, too, plays a role in resource optimization. Functional testing looks for errors in the code and areas where the software doesn’t behave as intended. By removing these bugs before software is rolled out to government employees and/or residents, you can ensure applications operate as efficiently and sustainably as possible throughout their entire lifecycle.

Even old data can create sustainability challenges. Many legacy government systems are weighed down by data that’s no longer needed. Agencies are often hesitant to eliminate these data stores for fear of discarding crucial information. The consequence is that searching agency databases and generating reports take significantly longer and devour more IT resources than they should.

Data integrity testing can address this issue. By evaluating data quality, identifying data redundancies and enabling better data governance, agencies can more quickly and efficiently process large stores of data.

What’s more, uncovering defects early in development eliminates the need for rework and wasted use of development resources.

Transitioning from manual to automated software testing
Traditionally, testing was manual, labor-intensive and time-consuming. Today, however, these tasks can be automated. Automation creates greater efficiency, leading to the need for less processing power and fewer resources.

Test automation also frees up time-pressed IT teams so they can focus on other critical tasks that support the delivery of services to their residents. For example, traditional, manual approaches can require weeks or months of testing before software is ready for deployment. Automated testing can reduce that time to just a few hours, shaving up to 90% off testing cycles and tangibly reducing resource consumption.

Not only does it save time, but paper-based resources as well. An automated approach replaces manual, paper-based test planning, documentation, and reporting.

There is a direct link between software quality and sustainability. By automating software testing, municipal and local governments can deliver better, more reliable applications to their residents while also reducing their environmental footprint.

Ben Baldi is senior vice president of Global Public Sector for Tricentis. He has extensive experience helping government organizations optimize their software testing strategies to improve internal operations and serve customers better.